I Can Hear the Sun

by Patricia Polacco, Patricia Polacco (Illustrator)

Overview

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author-illustrator of Thank You, Mr. Falker and Pink and Say.

Fondo's life is sad and lonely until he meets Stephanie Michele. She takes care of the geese who live on the shore of Lake Merritt, and when Fondo shows up there one day, she lets him help. But now the geese are preparing to fly south for the winter, and Fondo says that they've invited him to join them. Is hope enough to accomplish a miracle? Patricia Polacco masterfully intertwines themes of friendship, homelessness, and faith to create a beautiful modern myth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698118577
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	10/01/1999
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	786,825
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.06(h) x 0.15(d)
Lexile:	AD530L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Patricia Polacco (www.patriciapolacco.com) is the beloved New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of over fifty picture books. She visits as many as two hundred classrooms in a single year, not only speaking but listening to the hundreds of children that she meets. Grateful for what teachers have done for her, she is also a popular keynote speaker celebrating teachers everywhere. She lives in Union City, Michigan, where she enjoys speaking to the myriad children who come to visit her and the famous meteor, the object of one of Patricia's best-known stories.

Editorial Reviews

``It started that summer two years ago, the one that steamed into Oakland like a thief in the night''Polacco's (Pink and Say; Tikvah Means Hope, see p. 133) use of language is characteristically fluid, and her emotion-suffused illustrations are equally compelling. But her ``modern myth'' is problematic: the conflict is modern and realistic while the resolution is mythic and supernatural, and the effect is jarring. The story unfolds in a park where a homeless boy, Fondo, befriends a blind goose, two homeless adults and the park keeper, Stephanie Michele. Their relationships deepen, and Fondo shares with them his belief that "we all could fly once.... We just forgot how. If we'd think hard enough, we'd remember." Near the end of the story, when social workers come for Fondo, he flies away, led by the blind goose. "I know this is a true story because, you see, I know Stephanie Michele," the narrator says as the text concludes, compounding the uneasiness in Polacco's mix of gritty problems and miraculous solutions. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 2-4-Polacco introduces an unusual cast of characters in this modern myth. Stephanie Michele works in the park caring for the wildlife, and, unofficially, for the homeless folks who live there. A boy, Fondo, shows up one day and seems to belong. Stephanie and Fondo share a sensitivity to nature that others can't comprehend or appreciate. Then, they learn that the people at the settlement house where Fondo lives plan to send him away because he is a special-needs case. He runs away and accepts an invitation by the geese to fly away with them. The park "family" vow to keep his disappearance a secret, but readers are let in on this "true story" because Polacco knows Stephanie Michele personally. This picture book that points up the need for acceptance of all sorts of people is filled with graceful language and deftly rendered multimedia artwork done in predominantly earth tones. The artist places her subjects center stage on the white pages and does an expert job of capturing their poses and expressions with an economy of line and touches of color. This title is similar to Polacco's Boat Ride with Lillian Two Blossom (Philomel, 1988; o.p.) in the suspension of reality, yet her writing always seems somehow, magically, to make anything possible.-Sharon R. Pearce, San Antonio Public Library, TX

School Library Journal

Polacco (Babushka's Mother Goose, 1995, etc.) adds to her list of memorable characters in this somewhat mawkish tale of throwaway (homeless) people, a blind goose, and a park keeper named Stephanie Michele. The orphan Fondo spends his summer days sitting on a park bench in a nature preserve on Merritt Lake, watching the homeless people and the geese. Stephanie Michele, a big-hearted, middle-aged African-American woman, welcomes and befriends Fondo. She teaches him to help her care for the geese, shows him a blind goose who needs a little special help, and gives him an official park shirt. The goose becomes Fondo's special charge; in fact, he spends so much time caring for the geese that the throwaway people tease, "Pretty soon, you're gonna turn into a goose!" When Fondo learns he will be sent away as a "special needs" child, he wishes he could fly away with the geese—and does.

The title page calls this story "A Modern Myth," but most of its elements are too grounded in reality to achieve mythic status. The most fanciful aspects may be the cute bag lady and jolly Vietnam vet. Polacco's characteristic illustrations in warm brown, peach, and green, capture the vulnerability of the unwanted boy, the beauty of the wild geese, and the solid strength and loving warmth of Stephanie Michele. If only the rest of the book were as real as she is.

Kirkus Reviews